LXXXII. Away! they cry; another mile Who knows what time another soul Would come in turn to take controul? Then let us run a little while To save poor Mungo miekle toil : Yon fun'ral comes, but strain your pow'rs, And victory will soon be ours. THE GRAVE OF GLENALMOND. A POEM INSCRIBED TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ. The most romantic pass of the Grampian mountains, and one of the wildest scenes in the Highlands of Scotland, is Glenalmond, a valley about halfway between Crieff and Aberfeldy near the centre of which is seen the well-known grave of the Soldier, whose melancholy fate is the subject of the following Poem. PEEPING EEPING o'er jutting crags on the hunter below, To see the sleek fawn of the fleet-bounding roe, The trav❜ller to dreary Glenalmond may hie, And wonder at rocks there upraised in the sky : But when the grey eagle retires to his nest, O pass not, kind Sir, through this valley of Death, When sable clouds low'r over lightning singed heath; Or when the fierce night-hawk, in search of his prey, Screams round the black gibbet at parting of day; Incautiously would you this warning forego, Humanity strongly invites you to know The worm-wasted Braeman's fate, laid in yon grave, O'er which the tall ferns of the wilderness wave. In scatt'ring the vengeance of Britain on those Most valiantly Taggart devoted his prime ; Although a grim skeleton, covered with scars, Taking home little more than his bones from the wars, The strength of the veteran seem'd to renew As the dark heathy hills of the North rose in view. "O gather not round me, ye clouds, till I see Rising over my cottage the mountain ash tree! Ah! well I remember, when 'neath its brown shade, How bonnets and belts of green rushes I made; How dirks and claymores, of the bog-buried pine, I artfully cut out, and thought myself fine; As some Druid circle, thus deckt I march'd round, With squad keeping time to the saugh whistle's sound. "On garrison duty, or warding the plain, Alone or surrounded by ramparts of slain, Or resting at night by the wolf-scaring blaze, The home of my fathers was present to me; "Where blows the crow flower on yon dusky hill side, Rose Morag, in life both my comfort and pride; "And when I, to keep my old sire in the land, Put up a cockade at the chieftain's command, t Then cheerfully Morag, to share in my toil, "But now I'm discharged at the reveillie's sound, No more will I rise white with snow from the ground, Nor at the rough rattle of Cuckold come Dig,' Again shoulder shovel, and march to fatigue. |